BRAILLEE Action Hero for the Visually Impaired
Hotovo is a service company and the development of custom products is not really our core business, but it’s definitely a very interesting part of what we do at Hotovo. Some of the products we create we use internally, but the intention to work on custom built products for the public remains a high priority for us.
We’re always thinking about how we can give back to society. One way is to develop products that make a difference to people’s lives – and then continuously improve them. Ideas for such products come and go. We discuss them, always trying to find the right one – something that will really help as well as being feasible in terms of timelines. We want to do what we are best at, but at the same time successfully build the right product for the exact audience, not just create another ‘something’ to be put into a drawer.
This time was no different…
The story of BRAILLEE started when one of our Hotovo team members met a blind pianist in a local pub. A friendly chit-chat was enough to start discussions about ideas for a product that may help blind people, followed by the successful cooperation 🙂
In the following days we met with the "Slovak Blind and Partially Sighted Union'' based in Košice. And after several meetings, we mutually came to a conclusion on how we could really help with a topic that was very difficult for the visually impaired community.
We learned that, with regards to working with technology, not only was there no global software available for braille users, but the braille tables and technology that were available were complicated to use, requiring developer skills. Plus, every country and language ideally needed an official braille institution that would maintain them and ensure language-specific updates were regularly made.
At that time, when the idea was created, there was no Braille Authority of Slovakia maintaining Slovakia’s braille literary language. The Slovak Blind and Partially Sighted Union was the only organization trying to take care of it. However, it is quite a difficult process to do so, needing development assistance, and their experience with external developers was not meeting their needs – often taking several months to add a new symbol into braille tables and updating it.
We all agreed on how we could help, and committed to build a desktop editor of braille tables – and not only for Slovakians, but for global use.
The idea was that the software should be easy to use by the visually impaired, and it should also be possible to modify existing braille tables without the need for any extra development skills.
The development itself took several months, including all the necessary communication between both sides. Good things take time 🙂 Then the final product was born, and we named it BRAILLEE - the action hero for the visually impaired.
BRAILLEE's UI/UX is adapted to visually impaired users and provides an easy method to edit the existing braille tables or even create a new one.
Users of BRAILLEE desktop app can:
- choose the opcode
- edit characters or dots
- add custom comments
- create a completely new table with sections, etc.
All work is saved and exported in seconds and ready for publishing.
Users can also play a little bit with settings to modify keyboard shortcuts or change the software UI language (currently there are 9 languages available).
We hope and expect that BRAILLEE will be super handy for specific groups of users worldwide, especially from certain scientific disciplines.
That's how BRAILLEE works - simple and smart. Like every software should be 🙂
This product is already public, and accessible at www.braillee.com. Anyone can download and try it. Our cooperation with the Braille Authority of Slovakia - a newly established institution in Slovakia, continues.
Every Braille authority around the globe (9 languages) is welcome to benefit from using BRAILLEE. Buying a license or contacting us at info@braillee.com with ideas for improvement are the best ways to keep us proceeding further and continuing to develop additional features that can help improve the lives of us all.
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